


Saint Anne

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, IVF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 15:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: She is pregnant and not pregnant, Schroedinger’s embryo taking her womb for a test drive before deciding to buy.





	Saint Anne

They tell her that she had been wise to have her ova harvested when she was still young and healthy. She demurs, staring at the ceiling while the technician rotates the ultrasound wand in her vagina. Scully reflects that this is the closest she’s come to sex in a while. She imagines her reproductive organs being lush and rosy inside, like Jeannie’s bottle on that old TV show she loved as a kid. Tufted pink couches and curved walls, all ready for an occupant. Ready for a wish to be granted.

*

Lupron, Premarin, Prometrium. They sound like planets Captain Kirk would visit, places where he’d bed sexy aliens. Scully lets her tea steep and wonders if the galaxy were filled with little Kirk bastards, growing up and learning the names of strange constellations. Or maybe aliens didn’t have ova. Maybe that’s why they stole hers.

*

Mulder’s been looking at her like this ever since they were forced to deal with his masturbation as a genuine activity rather than an easy punchline. A kind of hangdog shyness mixed with curiosity, like he wants desperately to let her know he’d deployed the finest members of his Uterine Swim Team to send on this crisis mission and is eager to know how the lads have done.

Only one of her recovered eggs had been viable, one solitary survivor out of the thousands she’d been born with. A lonely little ambassador of the Scully line, struggling to perform under the crushing weight of expectations. It makes her think of the Pioneer Plaques, sent adrift into the emptiness of space, in the hope that someone might care that life was ever here.

*

Lush with hormones, she sweats through her suit jackets. She rolls cold soda cans down the back of her neck, against her wrists and forehead. Her breasts are so tender she flinches under the shower spray, and she settles for dragging a soapy washcloth over them instead.

“Scully?” Skinner says, and she wants to scream at him that she can’t answer his pointless questions because she’s exhausted but unable to sleep. That she has a recurring nightmare of walking through a warehouse lined with endless rows of cribs, and that each crib holds a dead blue-eyed infant.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead, not looking at Mulder because Mulder is looking at her. “Rates are up two tenths of a percent from last year.”

Skinner nods, jots something on his legal pad.

Scully feels sweat beading on her forehead, prickling, tormenting. She thinks of her embryo, cold and dreamless in frozen storage. She envies it, thinks back to Antarctica with longing.

*

She cries sometimes. The reasons are both vague and ever-present, heavy grey storm cells scudding across her subconscious. It’s a relief to cry, like she’s purging herself of toxins in an emotional sauna. She keeps a lot inside and it has to go somewhere on occasion.

“Any word?” Mulder asks, almost shy.

She shrugs. It’s too hard to talk about her endometrium with him, even though she’s certain he’ll want to be in the delivery room. Women usually have bowel movements during vaginal birth, she knows. It embarrasses her to think of Mulder seeing this.

The nuns at school used to tell her to give her worries up to Heaven. Scully offers Jesus, another improbable pregnancy, a deal. She will not complain about having Mulder see her soil herself in childbirth if only He will give her the opportunity.

Across the desk, Mulder has a tender look on his face. She excuses herself to cry.

*

A blastocyct in the uterus is worth two in the freezer, she tells herself. She is pregnant and not pregnant, Schroedinger’s embryo taking her womb for a test drive before deciding to buy. She promises it things, tries to bribe it into implanting. She imagines she’ll know when it happens, a sort of internal pop. She apologizes that it will be an only child, but promises it a puppy.

*

Mulder comes by with Mexican, Thai, Chinese, and pizza.

“It’s like Epcot Center,” he says, covering her table with cardboard boxes. “An international smorgasbord.”

Scully explores a bag of egg rolls, making the plastic crinkle. “You should have brought Swedish food for a smorgasbord.”

“Ikea was closed,” he says, helping himself to a slice of pizza. “You, um, you doing okay?”

No, she isn’t. She is afraid. Even St. Jude seems indifferent to her these days, as her family members have been plucked off with a sort of careless glee. She has decided to count Emily as family in the tally of Things For Which The Universe Owes Her.

“Yeah,” she lies, loading her plate with som tum and a taquito.”Just wait and see at this point.”

Mulder nods as though he believes this.

Scully loves him for it. She also hates him for his testes, for their ability to churn out fresh sperm into the nursing home years. He could go to a bar right now and make a dozen babies if he wanted to. She thinks of Mulder with a newborn’s dense, beanbag body in his hands; velvety apricot head tucked against his five o’clock shadow. She thinks she feels her uterus clench at the image, thinks she might lactate if she holds it in her mind’s eye. 

Inside her body, in the warm dark, she wills the sixteen cells that she and Mulder have made to settle in. She has an absurd desire to press his face to her flat belly and have him whisper coaxing things, to work the same magic that’s kept her around so long. He’ll do it, and happily. She knows this.

She knows where it will lead, his breath on her bare skin. And it will lead there quickly, because her fortitude is crumbling in the crucible of their intimacy.

She looks up at Mulder, who has lo mein hanging out of his mouth. “So,” she says. “How ‘bout them Knicks?”

He slurps the noodle in and sideyes her, probably close to guessing her thoughts. “It’s not basketball season,” he observes. “But it’s endearing of you to ask.”

Scully smiles, swipes at his mouth with a napkin. “Well, you’ll have to be the sports parent.” She regrets it as soon as she says it. Parent. They hadn’t talked it through yet, hadn’t staked out their roles and titles.

Sweat prickles her neck again, sweat and embarrassment and fear and shame. She moves to rise, but Mulder reaches out, draws her against him. 

“Hey,” he says, a shushing sound. 

His body is big and solid and warm around hers. She does not wriggle from this heat, though. Scully breathes, lets her muscles soften. She absorbs his radiant love.


End file.
